Instead Of Reporting On Mali Hotel Attack, Fox News Exploits It To Blame Obama, Clinton And Other Democrats

While the Mali hotel attack was still ongoing, Fox “News” broke away in order to make political hay out of it for the 2016 election. Sadly, “Democratic strategist” Julie Roginsky helped to legitimize the ploy.

As the Outnumbered show began, a reporter told us that a standoff still seemed to be going on, it had not been confirmed if the hostages were freed and that Al Qaeda had taken responsibility via a tweet. “ISIS not definitely involved but these groups have pledged allegiance to ISIS,” the reporter announced.

So why should Fox stay with the news when it can offer its special brand of “analysis” from five people with no credentials on the subject?

Fox host Tucker Carlson, the show’s #OneLuckyGuy, got the fear mongering started. Noting that Mali is just “one country away” from Nigeria, “one of the world’s great oil producers and a country that’s about half Muslim and a country that’s about to split apart because of radical Islam,” he added, “It looks like this is about to become a regional conflict that will have reverberations here in the west.”

Cohost Andrea Tantaros was the clean-up batter to drive the message home to where all Fox News “news” aims: Republican politicking and demonizing Democrats. First, cohost Harris Faulkner conveniently mentioned that Algeria is “right above Mali that’s had its own radical Islamist problems.” So “Punch” Tantaros seized the moment.

TANTAROS: And speaking of Algeria, that is where a lot of these French nationals and their families have emigrated from. So to build on what Tucker was saying, this isn’t just a regional issue, it’s a global issue. And this morning in the Wall Street Journal, there’s a report that you don’t have to be part of ISIS or wear the jersey, so to speak, to be interested in destroying the west. You can be part of Al Qaeda, you can be part of Boko Haram, the goal is the same across the board. They want to destroy the west at all costs.

At the same time, you have someone who wants to be president of the United States, Hillary Clinton, saying this has nothing to do with Muslims or Islam. You have Obama saying that ISIS is not Islamic. The Islamic state is not Islamic, is what he said. John Kerry rationalizing events like this. And you have Bernie Sanders saying that they’re just upset because it’s too warm in Africa and should probably get them windmills or something, for climate change. So I think the message coming out of the United States right now is not serious, they’re not serious people who are in control and I think this is a big problem. But it just highlights this attack how, I think, wrong the administration is getting it and the threat that we face.

Nobody challenged Tantaros either on her blatant and vicious exploitation of a tragedy or over her distortion of what Democrats have actuallysaid.

Cohost Harris Faulkner asked Fox Business’ Melissa Francis to discuss how resources are at stake in Africa. But Francis declined in order to do blame President Obama more explicitly.

FRANCIS: It’s definitely an oil-rich area and that’s a big piece of it. But I actually don’t think that’s a central part of this particular discussion in the sense that back to what Andrea said, I mean it’s really about tone from the top. It’s about the tone that the president is setting and that’s weakness and weakness is provocative. We’re seeing that around the world right now and if it feels like things are blowing up around you, they are. It is accelerating and we could be responding more.

And who knew that Francis, with her background in journalism and business reporting, is a military expert, too?

FRANCIS: Maybe it’s not boots on the ground immediately but we’re flying 8-12 sorties – I mean, talking about resources – we should be doing 100 sorties a day. That’s not more boots on the ground, that’s elevating this attack because they are escalating the attack on us and it can be felt by ordinary Americans.

Instead of calling out this hideousness, “Democratic strategist” Julie Roginsky pretended or, maybe worse, actually believed she was part of a serious discussion on the subject. Or she figured she’d earn a few Fox points by playing the “I’m a Democrat who's ready, willing and eager to criticize Democrats” no matter how trumped up the pretext.

“This to me leads to the larger question of exactly what we’re gonna do if you want to declare strength,” Roginsky began. She said that 100 sorties are not going to eradicate terrorism and she questioned whether we’re supposed to do this all over the world wherever there’s a trouble spot.

ROGINSKY: The question is, this is a global fight. Andrea’s absolutely right,this is a global fight. And what nobody’s been able to answer for me, not the president, not Secretary Clinton, nobody on the Republican side, have an honest discussion with the American people about what you want to accomplish. Because to me, what this would take is a generational war with hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground and I don’t think anybody has the appetite for that or certainly the political courage to stand up and say, You know what, if we want to do this we’re going to have to launch, essentially, World War III.

Roginsky makes an excellent point that I'd applaud her for if this were an honest forum. She also seems like a nice, principled woman whom I'd probably like in person. But this is serious stuff that she's enabling. By ignoring the giant elephant in the room directing the discussion, Roginsky helped everyone else, including the viewers at home, pretend it wasn’t there. Instead, she provided the fig leaf of “serious, fair and balanced analysis” to this segment that it not only didn’t deserve but that any self-respecting “Democratic strategist” should have at least tried to smack down.

Watch the shameless exploitation that Roginsky either didn’t notice or gave a pass to, below, from the November 20 Outnumbered.

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Roginsky is like Doug Schoen, Pat Caddell, etc. She is a Russian native who hasn’t worked on a campaign of any sort in over a decade. She lists her job now as a “consultant.” In other words, she’s a fraud that Fox tries to palm off as a diehard Dem.